


Atlas

by Vongchild



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Grief, Hansen Family, M/M, New Years, Pre-Canon, Team Hot Dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hercules Hansen, and the people he has loved and lost to the changing world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



Christmas Day, 2013. It’s sunny and warm on Sydney’s northern beaches. Hercules and Angela Hansen walk hand in hand across the sand. Chuck is a dozen-odd meters ahead of them, talking to a woman in a sundress about her dog.  Angela turns to Herc. She says, “He’s old enough now to be responsible. We should get him a puppy of his own.”

The world is changing.

The world is changing. Seismographs and scientists both say so. The smoking ruins of San Francisco say so. But today, the breeze is salty and the humidity is low and the world hasn’t completely changed yet. Chuck runs back to his parents. “That’s the sort of dog I want,” he says, pointing to the woman as she walks away. Her dog is low-set and jowly. The sort, thinks Herc, that slobbers everywhere and that’s part of the charm of the breed.

Angela smiles, and Chuck stares at her free hand for a moment, deliberating. A few months ago, he would have wrapped his fingers around hers without protest. Today, he shoves his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and announces, “Come on, I’m hungry. Can we go get lunch already?”

*

Before the world changes, Herc Hansen has a comfortable life. He has the three-bedroom bungalow in a nice suburb of Sydney, near a nice school and a nice shopping plaza, a fixed-rate mortgage that is almost paid off by four tours as a helicopter pilot with the RAAF. He has a beautiful wife who looks at him with kindness in her eyes and laughter on her lips. He has a kid who’s turning out pretty okay, as far as these things go – you can never tell if a kid’s turned out okay until they’re all done turning out.

After Sydney, after the bombs, when they’re just barely hanging on in an emergency shelter, Chuck Hansen looks at his father with eyes too angry for his eleven-year-old face, hatred incongruous against traces of baby fat and peach fuzz.  “I wish you’d let me die,” he says.

“Don’t say that,” says Herc.

“It’s true.”

Children don’t understand that alive is better than dead, or that emotional wounds heal in time and old ghosts fade, eventually, or that adults grieve the same as they do, only more quietly. Outside, Herc Hansen is holding together. Inside, he’s exploding. “You still shouldn’t say that,” he says.

“If I were dead, at least I’d be with mum,” says Chuck, and barricades himself inside a toilet stall and refuses to come out until morning.

*

Before the world changes, Herc Hansen meets Stacker Pentecost on a joint air force base fifty kilometers outside Kabul, when Stacker offers Herc his phone card. And then, it seems like they run into each other everywhere, until they know each other so well that they’re on each other’s Christmas card lists, and Stacker always asks about Angela and Chuck whenever he emails from wherever he’s posted this week and Herc knows almost every story Stacker has about growing up in Tottenham.

Before the world changes, Stacker spends the last Christmas before K-Day in Australia with the Hansens, because he was in Japan for a few weeks anyway and it was an easier trip than going home to England.

In the week after K-Day, Stacker calls and says solemnly that his sister is dead, and Herc puts the call on speakerphone so that Angela can listen, and she sighs, “Oh, Stacks, I’m so sorry.”

She’s distracted all day. Later, when they’re getting ready for bed, Angela asks Herc, “Does Stacker have anyone? Like a girlfriend?” She purses her lips at her reflection in the bathroom vanity, considering. “Or a boyfriend,” she adds. “Someone.”

“I don’t know,” Herc answers. “He’s never said anything one way or the other.”

There’s a strange energy in the air those days, like the world might be ending – and, of course, they all later learn that it is. Angela slips into bed beside Herc and splays a hand across his bare chest, and he leans over and kisses her like for the first time, careful electricity. She smiles against his lips and whispers that she loves him, and the moment stretches into infinity.

Years later, Herc understands that it was only an instant. He closes his eyes and misses the old world. He imagines an old sailor’s map, with history laid out like continents; days unfolding like the jagged edges and worn-smooth lines of mysterious coasts. He is adrift in an ancient wooden frigate, over the edge, where some inventive cartographer has scrawled: _here there be monsters_.   

*

A few weeks after Sydney, Stacker calls with his condolences, and he says, “I’m working on a new project. UN Security council. It’s all very experimental right now, but I can get you a job if you need one.” Five days later, he meets Herc and Chuck at the airport in Pittsburgh, leaning on a rented town car and holding a sign that says _Hansen_.

“You remember Mr. Pentecost?” Herc asks his son. Chuck rolls his eyes, says nothing, and climbs into the back seat. “Sorry,” Herc sighs to Stacker. “He’s been sulking. We’re grateful for this. For you.”

“We’ll talk later,” says Stacker. He holds the passenger side door open for Herc.

“So what’s this mysterious project of yours?” Herc asks, as Stacker puts the car in gear.

“Couple of mad scientists reckon they’ve got a way to go head to head with the kaiju,” says Stacker, eyes on the road. “I’ve got nothing better to do. Figured you don’t, either.”

Herc nods. Before—

Before, he had a life. Now, he has wreckage.

Herc sees that Stacker keeps a photograph on his desk at the Pittsburgh complex – himself, smiling, flanked by two women. The one on the left bears such a striking resemblance to him that she can only be his sister. The one on the right has red hair and a clever gleam in her eyes. They are close to the camera. The women’s arms reach towards the viewer, holding the frame steady.

Before, Stacker Pentecost had a life. Now, he has wreckage.

“What are we doing here?” Herc asks him.

Stacker looks out across the factory floor, at the massive sample armature on its suspension rig.

He says, “Rebuilding.”

*

Herc remembers the first moment he knew he was in love with Angela. It replays in his dreams sometimes, hyper-real, all of the colors oversaturated and all of the sounds too loud. He sees the moon reflecting off Sydney harbor as bright as daylight, hears the quiet rush of pelican wings over the water. They’d gone to see _La Bohéme_. Herc’s not sure he quite _gets_ opera, but Angela’s smile as she clutches her program and describes her favorite aria makes the ticket price worth it.

Later, his brother Scott will tell him, “She likes opera? She’s too good for you. Too sophisticated. Girls like that, they marry doctors and lawyers and bankers.”

Except, not Angela. Angela married Herc. And like some biblical proclamation, some judgment handed down from high: it was good.

Herc doesn’t remember falling in love with Stacker Pentecost. There is no one moment when he knows. Instead, they slip incrementally, in Jaeger drops and long, late-night talks. Sometimes, he recalls New Years Eve, watching the last minutes of 2016 slip away. Chuck and Mako sit on the carpet in Stacker’s little Anchorage apartment, vying for the attention of a roly-poly little Christmas-present puppy that has yet to be named.

Without a word, Stacker gets up and goes out to the balcony. Herc follows him. It’s biting cold out, a clear night, a sliver of waxing crescent moon bright and crisp in the sky. Stacker lights up a cigarette and offers one to Herc, who declines.

“Doc Lightcap’ll have my head,” he says.

Stacker shrugs. He’s been removed from the roster – Tamsin can’t pilot anymore, so neither can he. Herc watches as he smokes the cigarette down to the filter, and then stubs it out in an ashtray balanced on the railing.

“Scott and I leave for Long Beach on the seventh,” he says. Stacker nods.

“I’ll be alright,” he says. “I’ve got Mako to look after. The Academy to run. I’ll keep busy.”

“You hear anything from Tamsin?” asks Herc.

“She sent me a snapchat the other day. She was getting her head shaved,” answers Stacker. He smiles like he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to do. “She’s optimistic. Or pretending to be.”

Chuck yells from inside that it’s midnight. The puppy barks, and Mako’s laughter bubbles up from the living room like some seldom-uncapped spring. “Happy New Year, Stacks,” says Herc.

Stacker leans over and, very carefully, kisses Herc on the mouth.

And Herc leans in.

*

After Hundun sacks Manila, _it could never happen here_ becomes _well, it might_. The news says: have a plan, like you would for a house fire. Angela turns to Herc, who is seated beside her on the couch. She says, “If Sydney is attacked, Chuck needs to be our first priority.”

“I agree,” says Herc.

“What I mean,” says Angela, “Is that if you have to chose between us, you need to pick Chuck.”

“Only if you’d make the same choice,” says Herc. “Only if you’d pick him over me.”

“I would,” says Angela. “I love you, but I wouldn’t even hesitate.”

*

Herc used to have a framed copy of his and Angela’s wedding vows. Good paper. Fancy calligraphy. It went up in atomic smoke along with Scissure and the whole neighborhood. They vowed to grow old together.

Herc can’t for the life of him remember when Stacker first told him about his cancer. The exact moment doesn’t matter. It’s ongoing. Chronic. Terminal, eventually.

One more lover he’ll outlive.

The world spins under Herc Hansen’s feet.

*

He reads the Book of Job once. Before the world changes, or after. Sitting in a hotel room, or a shelter. The details run together. Maybe he reads it multiple times. Maybe every time he opens a bible, the first sentence he reads is, _There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job_.

Stacker, who attended Sunday school at some point in his misspent youth, says, “I always thought the ending of that story was odd.”

They are in a hotel in Santa Barbara, on two days shore leave. Herc has the room’s copy of the King James open on his lap. Stacker watches a football match on mute – Arsenal at Cardiff City. “How so?”

“They make it out like he gets everything back in the end,” explains Stacker,  “But he doesn’t. It’s new kids. Even God can’t bring the old ones back. The original loss is never undone.”

Herc looks over at him. There is blood dripping from Stacker’s nose. Stacker hasn’t noticed yet.

“I’m going out for cigarettes,” says Herc, closing the bible.

“You don’t smoke,” says Stacker.

“I’m going for a walk,” says Herc. “I need some air.”

He walks down to the beach and watches the sun set over the ocean. There’s a chill in the air. The year is fading fast. In the churning of the waves, he imagines Angela’s voice. _There was a man in the land of Oz_ , the water says. Herc digs a trench in the sand with his feet.

“Alright,” he says. “How much have I got to fucking lose before I get some of it back.”

*

Christmas Day, 2013. It’s warm and sunny. Angela curls her fingers around Herc’s and for this moment he has hold of her. Up ahead, Chuck talks to a woman about her dog. He is still an optimist. He still thinks the world is good. His biggest concerns are what to have for lunch, and how to convince his parents to get him a puppy.

Maybe Stacker will call from London later.

The world is changing. There are trace amounts of nuclear ash on the breeze, and mysterious readings from Challenger Deep.

The world is changing, but it has not completely changed yet, and just for right now, Herc Hansen still has it all.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays, everyone! Tielan, I am sorry that I wrote such a sad fic for such a happy holiday. :C Apparently I am just not about the fluff-writing kind of life, even when I set out to write about, like, puppies and sunshine. Oops. 
> 
> This was written in response to the following request:  
>  _I'm equally good with Herc/Angela with Stacker as a friend pre-K-Day (who knows, perhaps Herc and Stacker served together in Afghanistan - both Australian and British troops were involved there - and Herc glimpsed Stacker post-Trespasser and got in touch?), and Herc/Stacker after Angela is dead and different ways and kinds of love._


End file.
